CCTV to deter garden vandals

Curator of the gardens Dale Arvidsson says people are ripping out, stealing and even taking cuttings of precious and rare plants after hours.

"They don't really understand that that particular plant they've just snapped in half... that was a seed that was once collected by somebody either from the botanic gardens or a very important member of one of our environmental institutions.

"That seed might be from a plant that's very rare in the wild and it's the first time that seed has ever been seen for years and years.

"It's taken a year to germinate, it's taken four to five years to grow to be big enough to actually put into the botanic gardens and now it's gone."

Mr Arvidsson says contrary to what many people think, botanic gardens are more than just 'nice parks.'

"They're very important scientific and cultural institutions," says Mr Arvidsson.

When the garden was opened a decade ago, consultation with the public found that people wanted to be able to access the area 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But Mr Arvidsson says that unless public behaviour improves, they will have to fence off the area.

"If you've ever visited other cities or even capital cities you'll find that all botanic gardens have got fences and they actually close at certain items of the evening and the reason why is, the plant collections and often other things that go with the gardens like sculptures and artworks and special items are there all the time.

"You would never expect a museum which has extremely valuable items in their collection just to go outside every day, put all their beautiful artefacts on the lawns and just walk away.

"Our plants are just as important and as valuable as those cultural artefacts and art gallery pieces that you see put away in buildings.

"Our plans are for the fencing - to slowly roll it out over the next 10 years, but in the interim to have the gates open all the time so that it might just create that sense of this is somewhere special."

Mr Arvidsson says people don't realise the value of the gardens.

"The botanic gardens are going to cost council around $15 million over a 20-year period, that's a fairly major establishment for council to be funding. So to have the CCTV cameras installed, it creates a sense of importance of what the place actually is and that it's not just a park."

The cameras have only been installed around the main visitor centre of the gardens for now.

"We don't want to have to extend the cameras through the rest of the gardens so we're really trying to see how much of a deterrent this may be."